Environment Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald

Very dry conditions in parts of eastern Australia over the past six months. Photo: BoM

Melbourne's blistering spell of heat over six weeks this summer was more typical of Mildura or Broken Hill, and pushed an otherwise mild summer to one of the city's hottest 10 on record.

A cool December made way for a series of heatwaves that included the city's first run of four consecutive days of 41 degrees or higher maximums.

The 30-day period up to February 9 was the hottest ever such stretch for the city, with average maximums of 33.8 degrees exceeding the 33.4-degree average spanning the Black Saturday bushfires, said David Jones, head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology.

For a six-week period, “it was the summer you would expect if you were in Mildura or Broken Hill”, Dr Jones said.

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With the final day to be tallied, Melbourne's summer was running almost 2 degrees above the long-term norm, with a daily maximum of 27.2 degrees, and the ninth hottest on record, Rob Sharpe, a meteorologist at Weatherzone, said.

Rain was generally in short supply, with just half the city's average for summer, at 78 millimetres.

While the city's rain tally was only the city's 18th driest summer in the past 150-plus years of records, parts of central and eastern Victoria have recorded rainfall tallies very much below average over the past six months (see chart above).

Those conditions are likely to extend well into March, with little rain expected for Melbourne over the next week and temperatures climbing back into the 30s on Monday and Tuesday, according to the bureau. Fires in East Gippsland and at the Hazelwood coal mine could burn for weeks to come.

Melbourne joined Perth, Sydney and Brisbane among the capitals recording dry summers.

Sydney had just a third of its average rain.

Nationally, Australia's summer is likely to be 0.5 degrees higher than the 1961-90 average, placing it just outside the top 10, Dr Jones said.

This summer's quirky monsoon was one reason the nationwide temperatures didn't challenge the record summer set for 2012-13, when mean temperatures were 1.1 degrees above normal, Dr Jones said.

After an early start, this year's monsoon eased up until a mid-January revival that resulted in heavy tropical rains and cooler conditions across the north.

2014 may also be a dry year for the eastern half of the country, if early signs of warming waters turn into an El Nino event.

“The risk is certainly elevated, it's quite high,” Dr Jones said, adding that the prospects for an El Nino will become clearer within the next month or so.

For Victoria, 14 of the past 17 years have had below-average rainfall.